


Phil Coulson's Rules for Weddings

by SaltyCostumer



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Weddings, poor communication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 07:42:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12228552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltyCostumer/pseuds/SaltyCostumer
Summary: Phil Coulson has two rules for weddings.  #1 Get Clint Barton Into Bed.  #2 Remember That This Is Casual Sex.





	Phil Coulson's Rules for Weddings

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Clint Barton's Wedding Rules](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11921331) by [out_there](https://archiveofourown.org/users/out_there/pseuds/out_there). 



> This is the Phil' POV companion piece to the excellent story "Clint Barton's Wedding Rules" by out_there. It doesn't matter which story you read first, since they are offering different points of view on the same events. Many thanks to out_there for agreeing to let me rework their story.
> 
> As always, many thanks to EveSpring for the beta-reading, encouragement, and for fixing my commas. I have issues with commas. So.Many.Issues.  
> Additional thanks to Malarkey for the emotional-support beta reading.

“You’re in a good mood.” Jasper Sitwell remarked as he walked into Phil’s office “Did you finally get your expenses for Madrid approved?”

“Not yet.” Phil replied, the thought temporarily marring his good mood “Finance and I still aren’t seeing eye to eye on that.” Specifically, Finance wanted to replace the items which had been destroyed based on the standard rate for ‘old’ items, instead of going by Phil’s estimates for the replacement value of ‘vintage’. He’d gone through this before, but there was a new accountant he had to persuade to his way of thinking. Hence the delay, “But this is even better news.” he said, holding up the wedding invitation, smiling as he turned his mind to more cheerful topics, “The first wedding of the season.”

“Phil, not this again.” Jasper said with a groan. “You’ve done this the past two years. Its immature, it's irresponsible, its-”

“My annual opportunity to spend almost every weekend having sex with Clint Barton.” Phil finished, “It isn’t ideal. You’re right. But it’s better than the alternative.”

“Better than finding someone who wants more than casual sex for a few months out of the year?” Jasper said, bringing the objection he’d raised with Phil almost two years before, when Phil had turned down Jasper’s offer to set Phil up with his wife’s cousin. Because, Phil had explained, it would feel like cheating.

“Better than not having anything with Clint at all.” Phil replied, “Somehow, I doubt that anyone I’d consider a viable partner would be ok with me going to SHIELD weddings alone so that I can seduce Agent Barton. Or have him seduce me, depending.” he added, never one to leave out important details.

“That isn’t the only alternative.” Jasper pointed out.

“Yes, it is.” Phil said firmly, “Clint wants things to be casual, and I can’t say that I blame him, after the way things went after he divorced Bobbi.” Planning missions, when you couldn’t have two of your best agents on the same op had been miserable, for a start. “So I’m keeping it casual."

***  
Casual, of course, wasn’t the same thing as unplanned. And Phil planned their encounter at the wedding with the same obsessive attention to detail that he used for planning every op. That was Phil’s number one rule - leave nothing to chance. Have a Plan A, and a Plan B and a Plan C, in case the first two plans went fubar. That went double for times when the objective was something really important. Like getting into Clint Barton’s pants for the first time in months.

Which was why he was one of four people at the wedding wearing a suit - the other three being the groom, the minister, and the bride’s grandfather, who looked like he’d was wearing the same suit to weddings since his own wedding day. Not that Phil would cast stones. It was a well made suit, and a good dark suit never went out of style.

Phil, on the other hand, was wearing gray, deliberately selected to catch the eye of one person in particular. Judging by the look on Clint’s face as the archer walked up, he’d obviously predicted his target’s reaction properly.

A few minutes later, and he’s casually suggested that they go for a walk, and when Clint stops for a minute, leaning up against the trunk of a tree huge enough to give them some privacy, and Phil sees his opening.

A moment later, and he’s got Clint pressed against the tree trunk, hands starting to wander over Clint’s body "You know, I drove Lola in today," Phil whispers into Clint's ear. "Want me to give you a ride home?"

***  
The next morning, Phil wakes up early. Early-ish. Earlier than Clint had, anyway. Which was a good thing, because it meant that he had time to take a shower, and remind himself that it was morning, and that Clint was his friend. And his co-worker. That last night was last night, and it didn’t matter how good the sex had been, or how blissful he’d felt curled up with Clint afterwards. That he’d slept better than he had in months and- Casual. Shower, then food, then they’d go their separate ways for a few days.

Clint was awake by the time he came out of the shower, and neatly caught fresh towel that Phil had meant to toss onto the bed. "I think I left you ten minutes of hot water." Phil said, knowing it was a lie. He loved to take a long, hot shower, especially when he’d had a late night. Not to mention the fact that, well, saving hot water was something that you did for a boyfriend. For a lover. For someone that wasn’t casual. Varying from that was against the rules. He’d saved hot water for Clint once, and Clint had made sure to be on a mission instead of going to the next wedding. So no saving hot water.

Clint made a face, probably realizing that he’d have to take a quick shower, "Any chance of coffee?"

"After a shower. You want me to make it here or go to the diner round the corner?" Phil asks, knowing that Clint will pick the diner. Later in the wedding season, Clint might say ‘here’ and then Phil would cook pancakes and it’d be a quiet, lazy morning, like so many others that they’d had after a mission, or after other weddings. The kind of morning that made it hard to remember that this was just casual. Just about sex.

"Diner. I can hear the hash browns and bacon calling me." Clint says. Reminding Phil that this is casual. That last night was, well, last night.

"You know grease doesn't help a hangover, right?" Phil says, trying to keep his expression neutral. Hoping that maybe Clint will change his mind.

"You can still get pancakes." Clint says, on his way to the shower.

“Yeah, I know.” Phil replies, and starts to get dressed.

 

***  
As expected, Clint spends the next couple of days avoiding Phil. It isn’t unexpected, of course. It’s part of what has become a familiar pattern - they have sex. Amazing, passionate, mind-blowing sex, and then Clint spends the next few days on the range, sparring, talking to Natasha, hiding out in the vents. Anything that doesn’t involve being around Phil. Because they don’t have a relationship.

Phil respects the limits. He knew the deal when he signed up. At the Petersen wedding, when Clint had been tracing his collarbone with hot, eager lips, and he’s paused things for long enough to ask this was a good idea. And Clint had looked up at him, voice thick with lust, and had told Phil that this was just casual sex. It didn’t have to change anything. Phil could have insisted, could have said that he didn’t do casual, that he wanted more than just a post-wedding hookup. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d given in to lust, and need and the temptation posed by eager lips trailing over his skin.

The hell of it was that he still didn’t think he’d made the wrong call.

 

***  
The next wedding is in upstate New York. Phil doesn’t know Charlotte well, but she invited him, and it would be rude to not show up. Not to mention the fact that Clint mentioned, casually, that he’s going to drive up for the wedding.

He finds out, after calling both of the hotels in the area, that Clint hasn’t booked a room. Phil smiles as he makes his own booking, since that will give Clint the perfect excuse to come back with him to the hotel. Not to mention the fact that it also means that Clint will stay the night in his room, instead of-. No. Phil tells himself firmly. Casual. Which means not thinking about how the best part of the night, better even than the sex, will be falling asleep holding Clint in his arms.

Better to think about other things. Safer things. Like how good Clint’s ass looks as Phil walks up behind him. Sure the outfit is too informal for the wedding, but who cares, when Clint’s ass looks like that. Phil doesn’t, for a start.

"The pine tree," Phil says, once he’s standing beside Clint.

"The pine tree?" Clint asks.

"Best perch for watching the wedding." Phil gives him a sly, sideways glance. "Tell me you wouldn't be more comfortable up high." Because something is making Clint uncomfortable. Phil hopes that it isn’t that Clint has decided that having sex at two weddings in a row would be too much like a relationship.

"Yeah, but I wouldn't pick a tree with rotten branches." Clint points to the third branch up. It's splitting and if one branch is rotten, there's a good chance the others won't take his weight.

"I'll take your word for it," Phil says, squinting into the distance, keeping his tone even. Casual. "You don't like the place?"

"Eh." Clint shrugs. It's not New York, but most places aren't. "Not thrilled about having to drive home. A wedding where you can't drink feels like a waste."

Phil gives him a look. The same look he gives him when Clint neglects some important point of mission planning, meaning that Phil has to pick up the slack. Yes, in this particular case it worked out to Phil’s advantage, but that wasn’t the point. There was still the principle of the thing. "You didn't get a room here?"

"People are staying here?" Clint clearly hadn’t looked into hotels in the area.

"I am," Phil says with a smile. The same smile that he uses to say ‘you’re welcome’ when Clint silently accepts the contingency plan, or piece of extra clothing, or MRE, or whatever else it was that Phil brought along that turns out to be the thing that they need.

 

***  
It's 7am and Phil wakes up to an empty bed. At first he lets himself hope that for once Clint decided to grab the first shower. But no, the only clothes left in a rumpled pile on the floor were his.

Phil thinks back over the night before, trying to think if he’d done anything to make Clint feel the need to run out. They’d driven to the hotel in Lola - which had produced the effect that Phil had expected. Maybe a bit more than he’d expected, given that Clint had persuaded him to pull off on a side road and - well, only Phil’s deep and abiding desire to not get arrested for public indecency kept him from letting Clint blow him then and there. When he’d turned down the offer, Clint had laughed and invited Phil up for ‘coffee and a blow job’, conveniently ignoring the fact that it was Phil’s room, of course, but Phil wasn’t going to point that out. Not when he wanted Clint up in his room more than anything. He’d been undressing Clint as soon as they got in the door, and the sex had been- It had been passionate, but it had also been tender. Closer to making love than fucking. 

Dammit. That must have been what sent Clint running. Casual. Casual wasn’t marking Clint with his teeth. He’d just have to be more careful next time. If he was more careful, Clint would have ridden back with him, and maybe he’d have been able to remind Clint that technically the offer of coffee and a blowjob was still good and...Well, he’d just do better next time. Wilson would be getting married in a couple of weeks, and he’d have his chance then.

 

***  
Of course, even Phil can’t plan for everything. In this case, it’s a mission that ends with Phil having to slam the bad guy into a wall. They captured him, and rescued the hostage, and disarmed the bomb and the no one had more than a few scrapes and bruises. Except for Phil, who had a badly sprained arm.

Which meant that he wasn’t going to be able to invite Clint to come back to his place and have rough, hot, fast, sweaty sex. The kind of sex you could have with anyone. Well, anyone who was amazing in bed and knew you and knew what you liked and - it was supposed to have been hot, fast and not at all tender. Casual.

Phil sat morosely, watching Clint dance and chat and flirt. Wondering who he was going to take home, since Phil was too hurt and drugged up to show him a good time.   
Then Clint started coming by to check on him, which was - well, Clint was a friend. It made sense that Clint would be checking up on him. He’d spent plenty of time in medical, checking on Clint after all.

The thought should make him happy, at least Clint cares about him, cares about his well-being, but instead it’s just a reminder that he’s going home alone, to an empty apartment, that he’s a man rapidly approaching middle age and that the closest thing he has to a relationship is having casual sex with one of his friends. If they both get drunk at a wedding. Which is - well, it isn’t going to happen tonight.

But then Clint is coming to check on him again and wonderfully, improbably, offering to split a cab home.

Phil agrees with almost indecent eagerness, and they head for the door. For the entire cab ride home, Phil lets himself forget that this is just friendly, just a friend looking out for another friend, and lets himself bask in the fact that Clint is taking care of him. Even if it's just for a night.

So when they do get to the apartment, and the two painkillers that Phil took in the cab are starting to kick in, Phil lets himself ask Clint to stay over.

****  
The next morning, Phil wakes up with Clint still pressed up against his back. His shoulder his screaming at him, and his head is clear and he realizes that he’d broken all of the rules the night before. He’d asked Clint to stay, almost begged him to stay, and and it, oh God, this is going to ruin everything.

He’d been pathetic and weak and needy and - Phil took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Casual. This was casual. Clint was a friend, and Phil had been hurt last night. Physically injured, and he’d asked for company. The fact that he and Clint were having casual sex wasn’t even connected. Casual. Asking Clint to stay over had been-it was embarrassing, but people did embarrassing things when they were on really good drugs.

Phil let out a theatrical groan, letting Clint know that he was awake. "Well, this is embarrassing."

"What's a little embarrassment between friends?" Clint says, willing to play along. Willing to play it off like it isn’t a big deal. Which is a good thing, Phil tells himself. Friends. They’re friends. 

"Can we never speak of this again?" he asks. Wanting to move on, move past it. Move on to the next wedding. To the next time, when he’ll be healed and they can go back to a hotel room and have sex and he can wake up next to Clint again.

Clint agrees. Of course he does. The sex is good, and they are friends and it's casual. Nothing is going on that would make Clint freak out, like Phil being half in love with him, and wanting to more, much more than casual sex. No, Phil agreed to casual and he isn’t going to give that up. Because waking up next to Clint Barton is worth it.

 

***  
They don’t talk about what happened, and over the next two weeks, Phil is very, very careful to not act as though it was a big deal. Especially since Clint doesn’t start acting weird and avoiding him.

Instead, Clint is around him pretty regularly. They go on a couple of missions - milk runs, nothing serious, nothing even slightly risky. They chat in safe houses and on planes and when Clint randomly shows up in Phil’s office. They talk about trash reality tv and card collecting and the pulp novels that Clint loves to read. Its comfortable. Phil feels relieved that Clint hasn’t felt the need to put him in his place, to remind him that their relationship is just casual.

 

***  
Which is why, when Clint shows up at the wedding with a date - a very attractive, charming, very female date - well, it feels like a punch in the gut.

Weddings are their thing. They go to weddings and then they have sex, dammit. That is the pattern. The routine. The -  
Phil stops himself. He and Clint don’t have a relationship. They are friends, but beyond that - it's casual. If Clint wants to bring a date to a wedding, then he can. Phil can’t stop him. In fact, Phil should be happy for him. Happy Clint has met someone he likes. 

So he finds a table where he can talk to Natasha and Sitwell and avoid Clint and his date. Until Clint comes over and introduces his date - who, much to Phil’s surprise, isn’t someone Clint has been dating for awhile. This, apparently, is his first date with Kathy.

Phil is tempted to sabotage the date. To let Clint’s insecurity come to the fore, to tell stories that make Clint seem careless or reckless. But that wouldn’t be fair, it wouldn’t be right. Kathy seems like a nice person, and she is clearly into Clint and they’ll make a cute couple. So he puts on his game face and smashes down his jealousy, and does everything he can to make Kathy feel comfortable.

After awhile, it becomes oddly liberating. All of the things he’s never let himself say to Clint - how impressed he’d been when Clint stuck to it and got his pilot’s license, even though exams are terrifying to him. How Clint is kind and good and protects people who need protecting. There are dozens of stories about that, and Phil tells a selection of them, changing the details to leave out the classified parts. When he starts to run out of those stories, Phil talks about Lucky, the dog Clint had rescued. All of the things he’s avoided saying, because those aren’t things you say to a casual sex partner come spilling from his lips.

And the stories have the desired effect. Kathy is even more impressed and even more smitten, and even if Clint throws a few glances in Phil’s direction, at the end of the night Clint goes home with Kathy. Phil tries not to be disappointed. He fails, of course, all that he manages to do is to keep the disappointment off of his face.

 

***  
At the end of the night, Phil goes home, alone. He’s just gotten settled in with a beer and one of those ‘survival’ reality shows, because focusing his frustration on a alleged expert demonstrating profoundly shitty technique is better than focusing on his stupid, pathetic jealousy, when, unexpectedly, the doorbell rings.

He looks out the peephole, and sees Clint standing there. Well, that explains what happened with Kathy. She wasn’t a date, she was a message. ‘This is what a date looks like. This is the kind of person I’d take on a date. You’re a casual fuck.’ 

By the time he’s opened the door, Phil has decided that he doesn’t care. Clint may have used Kathy to send a message, but taking someone on a date and then saying ‘good night’ isn’t cruel, not the way it would have been if Clint had taken her to bed. Besides, Clint is here, and Phil had already decided to take what he can get.

So Phil smiles when he opens the door. After a moment in which he rejects the idea of anything about how he’d received the message, or or making any snarky remarks about Kathy. Instead he just asks, "You want to stay the night?" as though this was a normal, expected thing.

In response, Clint leans in and kisses Phil on the mouth. There's a lot of tongue and greedy, groping hands until Phil drags him inside, slamming the door shut behind them.

***  
The next morning Clint is gone before Phil gets out of the shower, a brief text telling him that there was a mission and Clint had to go. Casual, Phil tells himself. Casual.

 

He’s barely arrived at SHIELD when Sitwell corners him. “So, what do you think of Clint’s new girlfriend?” he asks, watching Phil’s face carefully.

“I think she isn’t his girlfriend.” Phil replies, “She was just a wedding date. He dropped her off and headed over to my place.”

 

“You didn’t.” Jasper says, sounding disappointed.

“I did.” Phil replied “This got us back on track. After I got hurt and-” he shrugged “We just needed a reset. This was it.”

“Phil, you didn’t need a reset, you needed to admit that you-”

“I needed to admit that Clint and I are never going to be anything more than casual.” Phil replied “I did that. Besides, there are only going to be another three weddings this season. Then it's all over.”

“Until next year.” Jasper pointed out.

“Possibly until next year,” Phil replied, “Because you’re right. I do want a relationship. So I’m going to date, and if I’m with someone when next spring rolls around, then Clint will have to find someone else to hook up with.” It's a good speech, and it sounds persuasive. Phil almost believes it.

Jasper just rolls his eyes and tells Phil that he’ll believe it when he sees it.

 

***  
A few days later and Clint is back from the mission in Poland, which is good, because it means that they’ll both be able to make the wedding over the weekend. And even better, they’ll be on a mission together after that, which means that he’ll get to spend more time with Clint. He’s trying to decide which mission to accept when there is a knock on the door.

Clint is there, probably to talk about the mission, because there isn’t anything else for them to talk about.

"You got a minute?" he asks when Phil looks up.

Phil hits a couple of keys and locks down his screen. "Sure. Bolivia?"

"Nah, Bolivia's fine. I'd prefer Peru, but it'll work." Clint steps inside and closes the door behind him. "This is more about the wedding on Saturday."

Phil manages to keep his expression neutral, but interested. As though he isn’t whipsawing between hoping that Clint wants to take him there as his date, and fearing that Clint is going to tell him that he won’t be there because of a mission. Like he isn’t trying to remind himself that this whatever it is between them is casual. "What about it?" he asks, slightly surprised at how neutral his voice sounds.

"I can't have sex with you afterward."

Phil isn’t sure how to process this. They’d reset things. Everything was back to the way Clint wanted it. So why is Clint doing this? "You were just checked by medical. They said you were fine." Phil said, trying to cling to the hope that there is an explanation for what Clint just said that isn’t Clint ending things.

"Not physically. Physically, yes, fine, but no. Every wedding I promise myself I'm not going to sleep with you, and then I do and then Nat tries to knock some sense into me, and I promise I won't do it again but I do, and here it is," Clint says, drawing a hand through the air. "My line in the sand."

Phil manages to keep his expression bland. Neutral. Boring. Because that is who he is. Ordinary. Dull. Not the kind of person that Clint Barton would be interested in for anything remotely long term. Unlike the Black Widow, apparently. "Because Natasha doesn't want you to sleep with me?" he asks, wanting to be certain that Natasha and Clint are involved now. Because somehow, that would be better than the alternative, that Clint is ending things because he has, somehow, failed.

"Because the sex is incredible and you're— And then—" Clint stops. Phil starts to hope that maybe he isn’t being abandoned in favor of Natasha. That maybe something else is going on here.

"Words, Clint. You need to use actual words." Phil says, wanting, needing to find out what is going on. What is really going on.

"It's great but the next morning, it's like nothing happened." Clint takes a deep breath and forces the words out. "I can't keep doing that."

Phil suddenly gets the feeling that he gets when an op has suddenly become much more difficult than he’d expected, because of a piece of last minute intel. What he wants to do, right at that moment, is jump up from his chair, grab onto Clint and kiss him breathless. But no, he isn’t going to make any assumptions. He is going to take this calmly, and slowly, and make sure he’s got all the pieces before drawing a conclusion. "Do you remember the Petersen wedding?" he asks, waiting for Clint’s answer.

"Sure." Clint says, his tone just as neutral as Phil’s. As though they were debriefing after a mission and not talking about the thing, whatever it was, between them.

"You suggested casual sex. That nothing had to change." Phil continued, wanting to make sure that he hadn’t been operating off of totally incorrect information. He had been fairly drunk at the time, and distracted by Clint’s lips on him.

"Probably. I was pretty drunk. I would have said anything to get you into bed."

Phil doesn't point out that 'I want to go to bed with you' would have been enough to get him into bed. "And that's not what you want now?" Phil asks, hoping that Clint wants more than casual sex. Much, much more.

"It's not."

"Okay," Phil says with a sharp nod. "No more casual sex. Anything else?" hoping that Clint will say what he does want. If he wants anything.

"Okay, then." Phil says, keeping the disappointment out of his voice as Clint leaves.

 

***  
“I think he wants a real relationship.” Phil says to Jasper as they sit in a corner at Simpson’s wedding, watching Director Fury demonstrate why no one should ever challenge him to limbo.

“Or he finally figured out that you do, and ending things seemed kinder than stringing you along.” Jasper said reasonably, “Or he and Romanov really have started a thing. Or there is someone else. The point, Phil, is that you don’t have enough intel to make a conclusion about the situation. You’ve already created problems by rushing in and jumping to conclusions. Take the time to think, and find out what is going on in his head.”

“I tried that.” Phil said, “He went monosyllabic and ran for the hills.”

“Then don’t ask him. Ask someone he’s been confiding in.”

“You mean Natasha.” Phil says, knowing the answer, and also dreading having to talk to her. Natasha was more than a little over protective when it came to Clint. It was   
one of the many reasons why he and Natasha got along, since he was also very protective of Cint.

 

***  
So, the next day Phil invites Natasha to his office, reasoning that it’s probably safer than the range or the dojo. Not that she can’t kill him with a paper clip, or her bare hands, but it's his turf, so it at least feels safer.

“So, I wanted to talk to you about something, um, personal.” he begins.

“Yes?” she says, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

“Well, Clint-Agent Barton came in here a while ago, and he told me that he and I would no longer be, um, physically intimate. Which, he said, was at your suggestion.” Phil blushes, wishing that he didn’t sound like a high school kid who is desperately trying to sound like an adult. He fights for, and manages to regain some measure of composure, and continues. “He didn’t say if that was because you and he are involved or if there is some other reason. So I wanted to discuss it with you.”

“There isn’t anything to discuss.” Natasha said, her voice ice. “Barton and I aren’t sleeping together. I just got tired of seeing him being used as a convenient booty call.”

“I wasn’t using him.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow “You never offered him a relationship. Hell, you didn’t even offer to have sex with him on a year round basis.”

“I thought that was his idea.”

“Men.” the word is laced with annoyance, “No, it wasn’t his idea. He thought that he was taking what he could get, that you’d never be interested in anything more than using him.”

“I never used him!” Phil protested, “How could he - of course I’d be interested in him. Clint is amazing, and he could have anyone he wanted. Why would he settle for me?”

“I have no idea.” Natasha said blandly, “But perhaps you should trying saying some of this to him,” she stood up, “And Phil? If you go to bed with him before you’ve gotten things settled, they will never find the body.”

 

***  
Nine days later, Nguyen and Smith are getting married. Clint has been avoiding him since he got back from Indonesia, and when he spots the archer, Phil decides to bide his time. Because, mindful of Natasha’s threats, he wants to talk to Clint first. Make sure that they are both on the same page, instead of, well, instead of just dragging Clint off into a corner and kissing him breathless. And talking, at least for the kind of conversation he wants to have with Clint, is something that is best had in private. 

So he waits, and watches. Noticing the way that Clint is keeping an eye on him. Not approaching, but as he chats with Jenny - the accountant has become something of a friend, once she started seeing things his way when it came to reimbursement reports, and their duels over what is and is not allowable have become rather enjoyable-Phil notices that Clint’s looks are becoming rather jealous. Which is good news, all things considered.

When Clint walks out onto the balcony to get some air, Phil follows.

"Hey," Phil says warmly, "Getting some air?"

"There were toothpicks on the table." Clint holds up the rubber band around his fingers and mines a slingshot. "Nobody deserves to lose an eye because I'm jealous."

Phil gives a small shake of his head, not quite believing that Clint Barton is jealous of anyone. But there it is, and Phil decides that he likes the idea of Clint being possessive. That he likes the idea of being Clint’s. Of Clint being his. So Phil steps closer and leans a hip against the railing, right beside Clint's hand. Not bothering to act like he’s doing anything other than trying to attract Clint’s interest, the same way that he has dozens of times before. The only difference being that this time, the goal is larger than getting Clint into bed.

"What are you doing out here?" Clint asks and it sounds like a line.

Well, if Clint is going to trot out a pick up line, Phil feels no qualms about doing the same. "Looking for you," Phil replies, drifting closer. He glances at Clint's mouth. "Wanted to make sure you hadn't run off to join the circus."

"Been there, done that." Clint says lightly, and then continues, "And speaking of things we've done before..."

Phil is pretty sure he knows an invitation when he hears it, and so he leans forward and kisses Clint, soft and gentle and loving. He slides a hand low on Clint's back, gentle and tender. Promising affection and love, and not ever letting go, he keeps his hand there when he pulls back. "My place?" Phil asks. Technically breaking his promise to Natasha, but there will be plenty of time to talk when they are enjoying the afterglow.

"Sure," Clint says, and Phil leans in for another warm kiss. "One last time for the road."

"No," Phil says, pressing another kiss to Clint's lips. Because he isn’t going to invite Clint back to his place if Clint thinks that this is going to be just casual. Just sex. The end of something, rather than the start.

"Not one last time. Not casual sex. Not," and Phil steals a kiss and then another, "casual."

"What?" Clint asks, his tone confused. Apparently Natasha was right when she said that Clint was under the impression that Phil wanted casual sex.

"You don't want casual sex but you still want me," Phil says, laying his cards on the table. "So let's drop the casual part."

"Just sex?"

"Sex with consequences. Sex that changes things." Phil says, praying that Clint won’t say no to the offer. Even though Phil knows that Clint could do so, so much better than him.

"Sex that means something?" Clint asks carefully.

In that moment, Phil realizes that somehow, against all logic, Clint had been scared. Scared that Phil didn’t want him. Didn’t want a relationship. Which was...well, it was insane. But still, it was useful intel, because it meant that Clint wanted a relationship. Wanted more than just sex. Which was, well it was perfect.

Phil held him a little tighter, not letting go, "That's the idea."

Clint grins, and it’s the most beautiful thing Phil has ever seen. "Okay."

***  
The next morning, Phil wakes up, and finds that he’s still snuggled up in bed with Clint. With his boyfriend, based on the whispered endearments of the night before. It’s a wonderful feeling, and Phil is tempted to stay in bed, but he’s a creature of habit and routine, and that routine includes starting the day with a hot shower.

"Going somewhere?" his boyfriend asks, as Phil yawns and rolls onto this back "I was going to have a hot shower," Phil replies, starting to stretch.

Clint doesn’t move, keeps facing the wall. "You mean use up all the hot water?" he asks, and Phil can hear the uncertainty in his tone. Phil realizes that he’s fallen back into their old pattern. The one that they’d established when they were both trying to act like the sex was just sex.

He doesn’t want to fall back into that, so instead of taking Clint’s words at face value, Phil says "It can wait," and rolls back towards Clint. Wrapping an arm around Clint, pulling him close. Phil presses a kiss to Clint's bare shoulder, "I don't have to get up for anything specific. Do you have plans?"

"Nothing I can't blow off."

Phil hears the change in Clint’s voice, the relaxation in his posture, and lets out a little sigh of happiness and relief. Glad that things are finally what they are supposed to be between the two of them.

Reaching down, Clint laces his fingers through Phil's. Phil responds with another kiss to Clint's skin, low on the side of his neck.

Clint smiles to himself. "Keep doing that and something will be getting up soon."

"That is a terrible line," Phil says, feeling happier than he has in a very long time.

“And yet…”

“And yet it's going to work on me,” Phil replies, reaching down to demonstrate.

Yes, things were finally where they should be.


End file.
